Highly Educated, but Working at Walmart?

Four years of college results in 20 years of debt; don’t pay it, and you’re unemployable.

In 2013, of nearly 40 million college graduates who borrowed, about 7 million defaulted on their student loans.

Once you default, 25 percent in penalties can be added to your total student loan debts, according to Student Debt Crisis, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reforming student debt repayment and higher education loan policies by educating borrowers and higher education experts with lectures, webinars and special events.

Being in default on your student loans can make you unemployable. Employers hold the right to conduct a background check, which oftentimes includes a credit report. A borrower who defaults is ineligible for government jobs, according to Student Debt Crisis.

Sixty-nine percent of individuals graduating from public and nonprofit colleges in 2014 had an average student loan debt amount of $28,950, according to The Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS). With offices located in Washington, D.C. and California, TICAS is an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan research and policy organization dedicated to increasing college access, affordability and success through improvements in student financial aid policies.

With an interest rate of 3.76 percent on Direct Subsidized and Direct Unsubsidized Loans, plus 25 percent added for being in default, your total debt is now over $38,000, and your credit is ruined.

How do you recover from that?

While people use different strategies to pay off their student loan debt in short periods of time, they live very frugally. The Huffington Post reported many of college graduates with heavy debt burdens on earned $10 to $13 an hour on their jobs.

That is not the life we hope for after receiving a $38,000 education.

You enter college to acquire the skills to get a job, but if you go into default on your student loans, you become unemployable, which also deepens your debt. Your college education is almost in vain.